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The Emancipation of Christian Learning in Anglican Parishes, from the ‘Lay’ Era to Another Discipleship Era without the ‘Lay’ Tag
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 April 2023
Abstract
Discipleship is a key topic for the worldwide Anglican Church. Approaches to Christian learning have varied over the centuries. The time has come to liberate Christian formation, education, and training from the constraints of the clergy and laity dualistic narrative, where lay people are defined negatively as Christians who are not clergy, not ordained, and not qualified. Inequality of discipleship exists in this clergy/laity disposition. The laity need to be educated. The paper explores the biblical, theological, and educational background for the need to emancipate Christian learning in parishes from the ‘lay’ era, with its limitations on Christian growth, to another ‘discipleship’ era where equality of discipleship exists, like the early church prior to around 96 ce. Disciples know that they are learners and ministers and engage in Christian learning as people who are ordained through baptism-confirmation, commissioned through Holy Communion, and qualified through their Christian faith, abilities, and skills, uniquely participating in the missio dei. The implications are discussed and illustrated in three practical examples of ‘emancipatory space’: A Learning Community Approach; Theology and the People of God; and Democratizing Christian Learning. The Church is called to help people become and be disciples, not laity!
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust
Footnotes
1
The Reverend Dr John Littleton is a retired Anglican Minister in the Diocese of Adelaide, Australia.
References
2 John H. Westerhoff, III and O.C. Edwards, A Faithful Church: Issues in the History of Catechesis (Wilton, CT Morehouse-Barlow, 1981), p. 8.
3 Westerhoff and Edwards, A Faithful Church; John Elias, A History of Christian Education: Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Perspectives (Melbourne, FL: Krieger, 2002); John Littleton, ‘Learning from Christ (How Do We (Be)Come Christian?): Process Is as Important as Content’, 2019. https://www.tjhlittleton.com (accessed 4 November 2022).
4 John H. Westerhoff, III, Will our Children Have Faith? (3rd rev. edn; New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2012), pp. 5-9, 21.
5 John H. Westerhoff, III, Inner Growth Outer Change: An Educational Guide to Church Renewal (East Malvern, Melbourne: Dove Communications, 1979), p. 58.
6 Thomas John Harvard Littleton, ‘Enhanced Faith Learning in Parishes’, thesis (DM), Adelaide College of Divinity, 2016, pp. 19-23. https://www.tjhlittleton.com (accessed 4 November 2022).
7 John Littleton, ‘The Limitations of the Word “Lay” (Laywomen, Layman) when Discussing Discipleship and Ministry amongst Anglicans in the 21st Century: Implication for Christian Learning’, pp. 2, 4-6. https://www.tjhlittleton.com (accessed 28 November 2022).
8 Anglican ecclesiology and liturgical practice undergird this understanding of Christian initiation and discipleship. Anglican ecclesiology holds the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist together. The Anglican Church of Australia provides liturgically for the baptism–confirmation–Eucharist continuum in A Prayer Book for Australia. Littleton, ‘The Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, pp. 17-22. Paul Avis, The Anglican Understanding of the Church: An Introduction (London: SPCK, 2000), pp. 67, 73-74. Paul Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 103-104, 113, 116. ‘Holy Baptism Confirmation in Holy Communion’, in A Prayer Book for Australia: The Anglican Church of Australia (Alexandria, NSW: Broughton Books, 1995), pp. 50-71. At the dismissal in the Eucharist all disciples are sent, commissioned to ‘go in peace to love and serve the Lord in the name of Christ’ (A Prayer Book for Australia, p. 144). Australian Anglican Scott Cowdell’s chapter on ‘Baptismal Ecclesiology and its Enemies’ emphasized that ‘every baptised Christian has a vocational calling within the Church’s wider mission of knowing, worshipping and serving the God of Jesus Christ’. Cowdell also wrote about the connection between baptismal ecclesiology and Eucharistic ecclesiology, stating ‘Indeed, baptismal ecclesiology can equally be seen as a Eucharistic ecclesiology, announcing and enabling God’s call to all the baptised who are sent out from the liturgy week by week “to love and serve the Lord”’ (Scott Cowdell, ‘Baptismal Ecclesiology and its Enemies’, in Church Matters: Essays and Addresses on Ecclesial Belonging [Bayswater, Victoria: Coventry Press, 2022], pp. 95-97). Through his baptismal-eucharistic ecclesiology Cowdell recognized that ‘lay people already preside. But they preside at the altar of the world not the altar of the Church. The laity are the royal priesthood God ordains at baptism to bring Christ to the world’ (Scott Cowdell, God’s Next Big Thing: Discovering the Future Church [Mulgrave, Victoria: John Garratt, 2004], p. 168). In a chapter on ‘Lay Vocation and Worship’ Cowdell wrote ‘It is the vocation of lay people to preside at “extensive liturgy” (out in the world) – following Christ in living out their Christian calling in the world – while the priest’s building up of the Church entails presiding at its “intensive liturgy” (in Church)’ (Cowdell, ‘Lay Vocation and Worship’, in Church Matters, p. 48; Cowdell, God’s Next Big Thing, p. 168). Several authors from other Christian traditions wrote on the theme. The work of John D. Zizioulas, a Greek Orthodox bishop and theologian, supports the view that the laity are ordained. According to Zizioulas, it is inappropriate to describe laity as ‘unordained’. Zizioulas wrote that ‘there is no such a thing as “non-ordained” persons in the church’. Zizioulas appreciated that all members of the church were ordained through baptism and confirmation which is linked to the Eucharist. He wrote ‘Baptism and especially confirmation as an inseparable aspect of the mystery of Christian initiation involves a “laying on of hands”’, which happens during the Eucharist. ‘The theological significance of this lies in the fact that it reveals the nature of baptism and confirmation as being essentially an ordination’ (John D. Zizioulas, Being in Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church [London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985], pp. 215-16). Richard Gaillardetz and Susan Wood from the Roman Catholic tradition also referenced the work of Zizioulas on this topic: Richard R. Gaillardetz, ‘The Ecclesiological Foundations of Ministry within an Ordered Communion’, in Susan K. Wood (ed.), Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood: Theologies of Lay and Ordained Ministry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), p. 35; Susan K. Wood, ‘Convergence Points toward a Theology of Ordered Ministries’, in Wood (ed.), Ordering the Baptismal Priesthood, p. 257.
9 Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies: Toward Emancipatory Educational Space (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), p. 149.
10 Littleton, ‘The Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 21.
11 Jennifer Strawbridge (ed.), The First Letter of Peter: A Global Commentary (London: SCM Press, Kindle edn, 2020, Loc 1715, 1737. John R.W. Stott, One People: Clergy and Laity in God’s Church (London: Falcon Books, repr. 1971 [1969]), p. 20; Hans Kung, The Church (London: Search Press, 1968, 4th impression, 1971), pp. 125-28. David B. Clark wrote: ‘The laos is comprised of the whole people of God and is theologically prior to any distinction between clergy and laity’ (Breaking the Mould of Christendom: Kingdom Community, Diaconal Church and Liberation of the Laity [Peterborough: Epworth, 2005], p. 80).
12 John Littleton, ‘“The People of God”, Discipleship and Ministry in the Anglican Church Today and Tomorrow, Journal of Anglican Studies (2021), p. 3. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740355321000334. Albert Collver commented that the term laity ‘occurs after much or all of the New Testament had been written’ (‘Origin of the Term Laity’, Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology 19.4 [2010], p. 5).
13 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, p. 3. Collver noted that Clement used the term lay when there was a difficulty in the Corinthian Church; ‘a problem between those who had been ordained and those who had not’. Collver, ‘Origin of the Term Laity’, pp. 5-7, 10-11.
14 Littleton. ‘The People of God’, p. 3.
15 Littleton, ‘The Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 3; Gaillardetz endorsed a view of the church ‘as the “community of disciples”’ where ‘all Christians, by baptism, are called in discipleship to follow the way of Jesus of Nazareth, to grow in holiness and help further the reign of God’. Gaillardetz wrote about the ‘equality of all the baptised’; ‘The most fundamental ordering of the Church occurs at baptism’; ‘To be baptised is to be “ordained” into a very specific ecclesial relationship along with all who profess the lordship of Jesus Christ’. He argued that baptism is the only adequate starting point for a theology of ministry. Gaillardetz, ‘The Ecclesiological Foundations’, pp. 27-28, 35, 41; Avery Dulles, ‘The Church: Community of Disciples’ in Models of the Church (expanded edn; New York: Image Books Doubleday, 1987), pp. 204-26.
16 Littleton, ‘The Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 8.
17 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, p. 8; Kevin Giles wrote that the first-century Christian community had leaders with Spirit-given abilities for functions needed, rather than the more structured ordering of later centuries. Some leaders in the first century were: ‘the apostles, prophets, teachers, and the hosts of the home churches’, exercising ‘a ministry for the benefit of the whole’. Kevin Giles, What on Earth Is the Church? A Biblical and Theological Inquiry (North Blackburn, Victoria: Dove Publication, 1995), pp. 186-87. Bryan Stone wrote that in the early church a remarkable transformation occurred as the church moved from the early first-century pattern of ‘a more charismatic, messianic movement’ to ‘a more highly structured, uniform and clericalized “church”. Bryan P. Stone, A Reader in Ecclesiology (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), p. 3. Michael Trainor’s commentary on Acts 6.1-7 showed how ‘In Acts 6, the Twelve demonstrated a freedom in ministerial flexibility that addresses the present situation. Pastoral need determines specific ministerial expression, rather than a pre-defined diakonia determining how to address pastoral issues’ (Michael Trainor, Acts: An Earth Bible Commentary about Earth’s Children: An Ecological Listening to the Acts of the Apostles [London: T&T Clark, 2020], pp. 49-50).
18 Steven G. Ogden, The Church, Authority and Foucault: Imagining the Church as an Open Space of Freedom (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 115-29; Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklesia-logy of Liberation (London: SCM Press, 1993), pp. 220-29.
19 Littleton, ‘The Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 7; Ogden, The Church, Authority and Foucault, p. 118; Kevin Giles also researched the word ekklesia and concluded that the modern English word ‘community’ best described the meaning of the word ekklesia. He wrote: ‘Sometimes the word alludes to the whole Christian community; sometimes to the Christian community in a particular location; and sometimes to a community of Christian people who meet together’ (What on Earth Is the Church?, pp. 112, 238-43). Philip Kariatlis concluded that ‘the Christian ekklesia was seen to be a people called by God, and invited to gather “in Christ Jesus (cf 1 Cor 1:2) to unity and communion by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit”’ (Church as Communion: The Gift and Goal of Koinonia [Adelaide: ATF Theology; Redfern, NSW: St Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2011], pp. 36-37).
20 Ogden, The Church, Authority and Foucault, p. 119.
21 Littleton, ‘The Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 7.
22 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, pp. 3-7; Schussler Fiorenza, Discipleship of Equals, p. 228; John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1966), pp. 374-77; Giles, What on Earth Is the Church?, pp. 11-12, 50, 56, 88, 105, 107, 148, 155.
23 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, pp. 6-7.
24 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, pp. 6-7.
25 James M. Rosenthal and Nicola Currie (eds.), Being Anglican in the Third Millennium: Official Report of the 10th Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, Panama (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1996), pp. 151-60.
26 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, pp. 2, 9.
27 Church of England Faith and Order Commission, Kingdom Calling: The Vocation, Ministry and Discipleship of the Whole People of God (London: Church House Publishing, 2020).
28 Kingdom Calling, p. 92.
29 Kingdom Calling, p. 90. Veli-Matti Karkkainen outlined Miroslav Volf’s ‘participatory ecclesiology’, that ‘The churches have to come to acknowledge the fact that in accordance with their being called and endowed by the Spirit of God, all members of the church depict and offer the manifold grace of God through their actions and words (1 Pet 4: 10-11)’. Veli-Matti Karkkainen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002), pp. 140-41. Miroslav Volf wrote, ‘Since … all Christians have charisms, Christ also acts through all members of the church, and not just those who hold office’ (‘We Are the Church: New Congregationalism, A Protestant Response’, Concilium 3 [1996], pp. 37-44 [40-41]).
30 Kingdom Calling, p. 33; In writing this paper the author recognized a spectrum of ecclesiologies across various church traditions: Anglican, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Free Churches, for example. Karkkainen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology, pp. 160-61. The ecclesiologists representing the various perspectives emphasized the priority of baptism and shared a common understanding about baptism, that it is the calling to discipleship in Jesus Christ. Paul Lakeland, from the Roman Catholic tradition, emphasized the priority of baptism. He wrote ‘In baptism we are all inserted into a missionary community and called to mission’ (‘Potential Catholic Learning around Lay Participation in Decision-making’, in Paul Murray [ed.], Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008], pp. 228-29, 232, 238). Jurgen Moltmann is another example. Karkkainen stated that Moltmann considered the church to be ‘a communion of equals’ and baptism to be ‘not so much a “believer’s baptism” as it is a baptism to Christian calling, discipleship and service’ (Karkkainen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology, pp. 128-29). Moltmann, on Christ’s Presence, wrote ‘Baptism contains a corresponding promise of Christ’s presence (Rom. 6). People are baptised into his death so that may walk in new life, just a Christ has been raised. They become of like form with him in his presence, by virtue of his promise’ (Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology [London: SCM Press, 1977], p. 124).
31 ‘Setting God’s People Free: Living as Missionary Disciples in the Whole of Life, Bringing Transformation to the Church and the World’ (London: General Synod, The Church of England, GS 224, November 2021), p. 3.
32 Paul Lakeland, ‘What Does Rome Have to Learn from Geneva? Whole-Body Ecclesiology and the Inductive Turn’ in Paul D. Murray, Gregory A. Ryan and Paul Lakeland (eds.), Receptive Ecumenism as Transformative Ecclesial Learning: Walking the Way to a Church Re-formed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 124, 127; Lakeland, Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning, p. 235.
33 Lakeland, ‘What Does Rome Have to Learn from Geneva?’, p. 128.
34 Lakeland, ‘What Does Rome Have to Learn from Geneva?’, pp. 124, 128.
35 Lakeland, ‘What Does Rome Have to Learn from Geneva?’, pp. 128, 130.
36 Lakeland, ‘What Does Rome Have to Learn from Geneva?’, p. 126.
37 Lakeland, ‘What Does Rome Have to Learn from Geneva?’, p. 127. Cowdell emphasized a ‘whole people of God ecclesiology’ in Church Matters, pp. 13-15.
38 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, p. 7.
39 Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 2.
40 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, p. 11.
41 Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, pp. 2, 10, 27; Gaillardetz, from the Roman Catholic tradition, wrote ‘The term “lay” is only with difficulty shorn of its past historical associations with a kind of ecclesial passivity. To define a ministry as “lay” is almost reflexively to define it by what it is not, a ministry proper to the ordained.’ He commented that to qualify ‘ministry as “lay” tends to vitiate the construction’ of ‘a positive theology of all the baptized, the Christifideles, as followers of Jesus and members of the people of God’. Gaillardetz, ‘The Ecclesiological Foundations’, pp. 43-44. Caroline Miley, an Australian Anglican, discussed laity concerns in The Suicidal Church, Chapter 12, ‘One People of God? Clergy, Clericalism and the Laity: The Laity’. The opening sentence of Chapter 12 reads, ‘“Laity” is what Christians who are not clergy are called’. In that chapter Miley wrote ‘The whole concept of laity needs radically revising, or possibly discarding altogether’. The book was about ‘the Anglican church in Australia, but its resonances are far wider’. See Caroline Miley, The Suicidal Church: Can the Anglican Church Be Saved? (Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press Australia, 2002), pp. 3, 152. The author, Anne Benjamin and Charles Burford also question the ‘lay’ terminology of the Church. See Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “lay”’, pp. 2-3; Anne Benjamin and Charles Burford, Leadership in a Synodal Church (Mulgrave, Melbourne: Garratt Publishing, 2021), p. 4.
42 Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “lay”’, p. 2.
43 Jeff Astley, ‘What Prevents Christian Churches from Learning’, in Murray et al. (eds.), Receptive Ecumenism, p. 370.
44 Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, pp. 4-6. The anecdotal evidence examples derive from the author’s parish ministry experience.
45 Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 22.
46 Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 21. Susan Wood, when writing about a vision of ordered ministries in the Church, concluded that ‘the recognition that all ministries are grounded in baptism’, that ‘All are “ordained” in baptism’, and that ‘Baptism is an initiation into the life of Christ and the way of discipleship in the Church by which all participate in the mission of the Church’, ‘constitute a repositioning of the Church’ and provide ‘a way forward in articulating a contemporary theology of ministry’. Wood, ‘Convergence Points’, pp. 256-57, 265.
47 Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, p. 23; John Hull, What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning? (London, SCM Press, 1985), p. 208. Hull wrote ‘Teaching must now enable learning but not control it’.
48 Littleton, ‘Limitations for the Word “Lay”’, p. 21.
49 Westerhoff, Will our Children Have Faith?, p. 141.
50 Westerhoff, Will our Children Have Faith?, p. 142.
51 Westerhoff, Will our Children Have Faith?, p. 141; David Clark, drawing on the work of John Hull, outlined five ‘Models of Learning’ available: 1. Indoctrination (condition learners, impose and imprint information imparted); 2. Nurture (socialize); 3. Instruction (impart knowledge); 4. Training (impart skills); 5. Education (openness and learning to learn and think). See Clark, Breaking the Mould of Christendom, pp. 32-35. Models of Learning 2-5 relate to Westerhoff’s processes.
52 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, pp. 150, 163-67.
53 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, p. 149.
54 John Littleton, Enhance Learning in Parishes: A Learning Community Approach for Church Congregations (Unley, Adelaide: MediaCom Education, 2017), pp. 13-15; John Littleton, ‘Enhanced Learning in the Parish Context: A Learning Community Approach’, Practical Theology 11.4 (2018), pp. 320-33 (320).
55 Littleton, Enhance Learning in Parishes, p. 18. Littleton, ‘Enhanced Learning in the Parish Context’, p. 328.
56 Craig Mitchell, ‘(Re)forming Christian Education in Congregations as the Praxis of Growing Disciples for a Missional Church’, thesis (Doctor of Philosophy), Flinders University, South Australia, 2018, pp. ii-iii.
57 Mitchell, ‘(Re)forming Christian Education’, p. 307.
58 John Littleton, ‘Receptive Ecumenism, Ecumenical Learning and Learning Communities’, in Vicky Balabanski and Geraldine Hawkes (eds.), Receptive Ecumenism: Listening, Learning and Loving in the Way of Christ (Adelaide, Australia: ATF Theology, 2018), p. 106.
59 Anthony M. Maher (ed.), Theology and the People of God: So We Pray, So We Believe, So We Live (Strathfield, NSW: St Paul’s Publications, 2021).
60 Littleton, ‘The People of God’, pp. 3-10; Stephen Pickard launched Maher’s book on 18 May 2022 at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (ACC&C) in Canberra. The Book Launch Review of the book is available in Engage, Issue 10, pp. 26-27, https://www.about.csu.edu.au>community>accc (accessed 21 November 2022). In that review Pickard commented, ‘However, reading this book as an Anglican and not a Roman Catholic, I find the essays resonate not simply with the Catholic Church but the Church Catholic. It breathes a genuine ecumenical air.’
61 Anthony M. Maher, ‘Theology and the People of God’, in Maher (ed.), Theology and the People of God, p. 51.
62 Maher, ‘Theology and the People of God’, p. 51.
63 Anthony M. Maher, ‘Pastoral-Practical Theology: A Theology of Hope’, in Maher (ed.), Theology and the People of God, p. 380.
64 Maher, ‘Theology and the People of God’, pp. 61-62, 64-65.
65 Maher, ‘Pastoral-Practical Theology’, p. 394.
66 Maher, ‘Pastoral-Practical Theology’, p. 396.
67 Maher, ‘Pastoral-Practical Theology’, p. 389.
68 Anthony M. Maher, ‘Introduction: The Lex Orandi Axiom’ in Maher (ed.), Theology and the People of God, p. 29.
69 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, pp. 6-11, 167.
70 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, pp. 171-73.
71 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, p. 153.
72 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, pp. 153-62.
73 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, pp. 154-56.
74 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, p. 157.
75 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, p. 173.
76 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, pp. 177-205.
77 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, pp. 5, 8-21, 48-49, 194.
78 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, p. 13.
79 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, p. 13.
80 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, pp. 19, 49.
81 Littleton, Enhance Learning in Parishes, p. 73.
82 Littleton, Enhance Learning in Parishes, pp. 18, 23-33; Littleton, ‘Enhanced Learning in the Parish Context’, pp. 328-29.
83 Philip Hughes and Audra Kunciunas, Rural Churches in the Uniting Church in South Australia: Models of Ministry (Nunawading, Victoria: Christian Research Association (CRA), 2008), p. 23.
84 Barbara J. Fleischer, ‘The Ministering Community as Context for Religious Education: A Case Study of St. Gabriel’s Catholic Parish’, Religious Education, 101.1 (Winter 2006), pp. 104-22 (120).
85 Ruth Powell, ‘NCLS: 30 Years of Research on What Makes Churches Healthy’ in What Makes a Healthy Church (Sydney: NCLS Research, 5 August 2021).
86 Ruth Powell, Nicole Ward, John Bellamy, Sam Sterland, Kathy Jacka and Miriam Pepper, Enriching Church Life: A Guide to the Results from National Church Life Surveys for Local Churches (North Ryde BC NSW 1670: NCLS Research, 2022, 3rd edn), pp. 24-26.
87 Powell et al., Enriching Church Life, p. 24.
88 Powell et al., Enriching Church Life, pp. 24-25. NCLS researchers wrote that: ‘When more attenders are growing in faith, churches tend to grow’ in attendance and the welcoming of newcomers. Ruth Powell wrote: ‘Some aspects of health appear time and again in fostering or relating to other aspects: clear and owned vision, empowering leadership, and faith sharing’. Powell, What Makes a Healthy Church, p. 14.
89 Schussler Fiorenza, Democratizing Biblical Studies, p. 110.
90 Julia Gilliard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala used the word ‘thwarted’ when writing about the potential promise for all humanity of each child born. Their use of the word ‘thwarted’ prompted the author’s use of the word in relation to the potential of each disciple. They wrote ‘Should that potential promise be thwarted just because we hold our prejudices too dear or we find the process of letting go too confronting?’ in their book Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons (Australia: Vintage Books, 2020), p. 301.
91 Thomas H. Groome, Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision (Melbourne, Australia: Dove Communications, 1980), pp. 229-30; John Littleton ‘Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis in a Theological Education’, 2019. https://www.tjhlittleton.com (accessed 24 November 2022).
92 Groome, Christian Religious Education, p. 230.
93 Mark Chater, Jesus Christ, Learning Teacher: Where Theology and Pedagogy Meet (London: SCM Press, 2020), p. 21.
94 Chater, Jesus Christ, Learning Teacher, p. 20.
95 Chater, Jesus Christ, Learning Teacher, p. xix.
96 Chater, Jesus Christ, Learning Teacher, pp. 186-92.
97 Hull, What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning? p. 209.
98 Hull, What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning? p. 209. In this paper the relationship between ecclesiology and Christian learning is significant. A People of God ecclesiology is more conducive to Christian growth and learning. More generally in the life of the Church the link between ecclesiology and the role of the laity matters. The work of Miroslav Volf illustrates and supports this contention. Volf commented on the connection between ecclesiology and lay participation and effectiveness in the life of the Church. He drew attention to ‘the passiveness of the laity’ when a hierarchical and clergy ecclesiology dominated and the role of the laity was downplayed. In contrast, he argued that the whole people of God participatory ecclesiology provided an adequate theology to promote participation and the effectiveness of the laity. See Volf, ‘We Are the Church’, pp. 39, 40-43; Karkkainen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology, pp. 140-41.
99 See n. 47.
100 Littleton, ‘Limitations of the Word “Lay”’, pp. 23-24.
101 Jeff Astley and Leslie J. Francis, Critical Perspectives in Christian Education: A Reader on the Aims, Principles and Philosophy of Christian Education (Leominster: Gracewing, 1994), p. 3. Astley and Francis wrote that Christian Education has been generally defined as ‘The processes by which people learn to become Christian and to be more Christian’.